


The Chain

by icestorm1196



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Canonical Character Death, Dean's self worth issues are huge, Freeform, Nothing happy happens here, Post-Episode: s12e23 All Along the Watchtower, Self-Blame, blaming all of the people, kind of stream of consciousness, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 04:16:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10983183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icestorm1196/pseuds/icestorm1196
Summary: Coda to s12e23, All Along the WatchtowerDean's inner monologue in the moments after 12x23 ends.





	The Chain

**Author's Note:**

> So this is unbeta'd and unedited even a little bit.  
> It is...a drabble, because I needed to get it out of my system. I may or may not come back to this story later and actually edit it a bit. Right now it is sort of stream of consciousness...but it is also sort of that way on purpose. Dean is not in a good headspace (obviously). There is no dialogue (spoken) and nothing is resolved. Just...you've been warned.
> 
> Title comes from Ingrid Michaelson's The Chain.

_The sky looks pissed  
The wind talks back  
My bones are shifting in my skin  
And you, my love, are gone._

_My room seems wrong  
The bed won’t fit  
I cannot seem to operate,  
And you, my love, are gone_

_I won’t say  
That I’ll never love,  
But I don’t say a lot of things,  
And you, my love, are gone_

_So glide away on soapy heels,  
And promise not to promise anymore,  
And if you come around again,  
Then I will take the chain from off the door_  
\--Ingrid Michaelson

Dean stared numbly at the sky, barely feeling the hard, cold ground digging into his knees. _It should be raining_ he thought, vaguely. Thundering, maybe. A blizzard or hurricane or winds strong enough to tear boughs from trees. Anything but this...this mild, clear evening. It was _wrong_ that everything was so calm. For a brief, hysterical moment, he wanted to be like Rosario Dawson’s character in Men in Black II, to have the ability to make the weather correspond with his mood. He slumped further, collapsing to sit on his heels, unable to even kneel properly. His knee brushed against something solid, something still _warm_ and his stomach rolled.

He dug his fingers into his knees, stared directly at the spot where Mary had disappeared. It was easier, somehow, to think of his mom in that...twisted other universe, trapped with Lucifer, than it was to think of the cooling body in front of him. What did that say about him, he wondered. Nothing good, probably. His chest ached, and as he sucked in a ragged, gasping breath, he realized that he was crying. When that had started, he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t quite get up the energy to wipe his eyes. It was easier anyway, to view the world through the blur that tears brought with them.

Sam was...somewhere. Dean wasn’t exactly sure. He’d gone...he’d gone. Dean hadn’t been paying attention. Maybe….maybe he’d gone back to the house? There had been some sort of explosion there. But Dean had been focused on the blade sticking out of Castiel’s chest, on the blood pooling on that white shirt. And then, then Mary had...had just….He gasped again, a horrible, wrenching sound that tore at his throat and made his head ache. And Mom was just gone, sucked into some horrible dimension with Lucifer (and all he could see as she and the devil fell through that portal was Sam and Adam falling into a pit in a cemetery in Kansas) and Cas was...just lying there. When had Sam left? Before or after Dean had fallen to the ground? He didn’t know, and he _knew_ that thought should trouble him, but the entire sequence of events had muddied beyond comprehension. Maybe, maybe once he could _move_ again, once the entire world had stopped twisting around him, he’d be able to think about it more clearly. 

_He looked so surprised, for that brief moment,_ thought Dean. _Before he lit up like a Christmas tree._ He felt sick again. His chest hurt. It almost felt as though he’d been the one run through with an angel blade. _How does it feel to be stabbed in the back? If you’d just trusted me, if you’d **listened...**_ he thought wildly, hatefully. Dean immediately wished he could take the thought back. This was his fault, wasn’t it? So much of their time together, he’d spent berating Cas, treating him like he was stupid, calling him dumb names...and where was Dean the few times that Castiel had come to him for help? Not there. He’d been trying, lately, he really had, to make Cas see that he was part of the family. But...perhaps it had been too little too late. _But if you’d listened, if you had made Kelly let us take that thing’s grace away....you’d be alive. Mom would be here._ They’d still have the devil to worry about, but...who was to say that wasn’t still the case? If Castiel and Balthazar could send Sam and Dean to a random alternate universe, who was to say Lucifer couldn’t just come back whenever he found the spell ingredients? 

But no. Ultimately...ultimately, there was really only one person to blame for all of this. Lucifer had set all this into being when he’d fucked Kelly Kline. And it felt better to blame the devil than himself...or Castiel. Cas, who was still _lying_ there in front of Dean, empty eyes staring at the sky that Dean couldn’t bring himself to look at anymore.

One of his hands had slipped from his knee, and his fingers slowly tightened on the sleeve of that stupid, dirty trenchcoat. He couldn’t make himself touch Cas himself, not yet. _Why did you go through the portal?_ He was praying, now. When had that….why? Why would he do that? No one was listening. He couldn’t stop. _We had a plan. We were on our way back. Why did you go through?_ Cas should have been….anywhere but there, shouldn’t have had his back to the portal in the first place. _Why didn’t I see him follow you out?_ And there it was. The crux of the matter. The portal was still open. That was...obviously Cas had gone through to try and injure Lucifer to the extent that he couldn’t follow them back out, since the portal was taking so damn long to close. That...had to be it, right? It was taking too long, and so Castiel had tried to slow down Lucifer, because of _course_ he’d follow them out if he could. And Dean hadn’t seen Lucifer follow Cas out of that other world. He’d been right there, he’d been _looking_ right there, and he hadn’t seen….his stomach rolled and Dean heaved. He should have seen. He should have been able to pull Cas out of the way. To give him some warning. 

He should have been able to do something other than just stand there like a moron while his best friend was stabbed through the heart right in front of him. 

A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Dean would know his little brother anywhere, but he couldn’t make himself move, couldn’t make himself just get _up_. There were things to do, he knew. Important things. The nephilim, Lucifer’s nephilim, was still...around. At some point, Dean was pretty sure that he’d want nothing more than to kill the thing, slowly. Painfully. After all, even if it’s dad was gone, at least for the moment, it was still here. If it hadn’t been for that….that thing, none of this would have happened. But revenge was...far away right now. Feeling anything at all felt far away. 

Dean heard Sam’s voice, distantly. He couldn’t focus on the words, just let the sound of it buffer him slightly. Sam said Cas’ name, and the sound Dean made would have been highly embarrassing if he was able to feel anything other than numb. This was...shock, right? Just shock. He couldn’t even scream properly, the way he wanted to, the way he had when Sam had died in his arms all those years ago. Sam had been stabbed in the back too, thought Dean, and he’d not been able to stop that either. There was no deal he could make this time though. No one to bargain with, no one to barter with, or to beg a boon. There was no one. And that too, was his fault. 

There was a weight on his legs and a pressure around his chest. At some point, he’d dragged Castiel’s limp body onto his lap, clutching it like a drowning man does a piece of driftwood. Sam’s arms were wrapped around him, and Dean was shaking, dry sobs wracking his chest. The wind played off the water and for a moment, was almost as cold as Dean felt in his soul. Cas’ hair moved and Dean could almost imagine that the angel had turned his head. Almost. 

Sam was still a strong presence behind him, and Dean wondered how long before he too was gone. He’d fooled himself so….entirely. He’d honestly thought that they’d get out of this. Him and Sam, Mom. Even Crowley. And Cas. Of course Cas had been there, in Dean’s imaginings of things After. After they won. But now….now Crowley was dead (as the demon had known he would be from the moment he’d gone to the bunker to offer his assistance). Mom was gone, alive, for the moment, but trapped in a world where an angry archangel had just been trapped right next to her. And Cas….Cas lay still in his arms. Of course things weren’t going to go the way he’d hoped. He’d never even get the chance to say...to say all those things that he’d been _meaning_ to say for years now. Things he’d never really been able to put into words, but that he tried so hard to say anyway; with mix-tapes, and fixing up a rundown old truck, and changing the sheets of a little used bed in the bunker. He thought he could say it now. And of course...even if he did, the words _still_ wouldn’t be heard.

Dean finally looked down, looking into those blue eyes for one last time, before he reached with a trembling hand and carefully closed Cas’ eyes for him. And finally, finally, as whatever cocoon he’d wrapped himself in shattered, he felt the first drops of rain start to fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Any explanation of what happened with Jack is lacking because Sam explained it when Dean wasn't listening. 
> 
> This might eventually have a sequel. Or more chapters with alternating POVs or something. I am not sure. We will see where my muse goes.
> 
> As this was written in like, an hour before I went to work today, I make no promises. 
> 
> Also this is the shortest thing I've ever written. Which is weird. I dunno how I really feel about it, but....like I said, I just needed to write something.


End file.
